Tag: FLDC

Tis the season for conferences in the franchise space! Here are some excellent opportunities in the coming months for CEOs, marketing & sales executives, and others to learn about innovations and network with peers:

More franchisors have asked me about using Social Media for franchise development in the past 6 weeks than in the previous 6 years.

At recent events including FranTech, Franchise Leadership and Development Conference, The Chicago Women’s Franchise Network, and Springboard, my conversations have focused on using Facebook for not only generating new leads from your consumer customer base, but also engaging with candidates further down your franchise development sales funnel using Facebook’s Custom Audience Targeting.

And often, the next question has been: “But what about LinkedIn?”

Franchisors at these events ask about improving their results in finding candidates on LinkedIn. Many tried LinkedIn early in their online marketing journey but got bad results and quickly moved on.

I suggest that LinkedIn may not be appropriate for engaging with some types of potential franchisees, just as Facebook or other channels may not work for other types of prospects.

Recommendation #1: Before jumping into any social media marketing for franchise development, look at who your candidates are and where they spend their time on social media.

The Facebook Side

If your best franchise candidates are those folks who will be operating their own store or other franchise location day-to-day, Facebook is the best place to engage. They may be customers of a current franchisee who could visualize themselves running their own shop. They have an interest – and hopefully a passion – for your brand’s type of service, work, food, or culture!

At our FLDC panel discussion, Wild Birds Unlimited exemplified this type of brand. Chief Development Officer Paul Pickett shared how individuals on Facebook can engage with a brand that shares their passion and then picture themselves as owning their own store. I would add that being a great storyteller and sharing appealing images and videos is key in developing these relationships! Facebook is the most important place to spend your development time as this is where such future owners are already spending their time.

The LinkedIn Side

If your best franchise candidates are looking for an investment or for their next franchise award, let’s look at LinkedIn. Those candidates are in “the business of business” and invest in a franchise based only on return. LinkedIn is an excellent place to share information about your franchise’s value.

On the same FLDC panel, LinkedIn success was represented by ZIPS Franchising. ZIPS Vice President Aaron Goldberg does a fantastic job communicating on LinkedIn with potential business partners who are multi-unit owners investing in franchises.

At my FranTech Roundtable on Social Media in October, many Franchisors shared with me that they burn through their LinkedIn ad budgets quickly. Unlike Facebook where your boosted posts are easy for the right prospects to consume, LinkedIn puts you in a very competitive position to get a franchise development ad viewed.

Recommendation #2: I’m currently recommending not initially buying ads on LinkedIn. Instead, use LinkedIn as the one-to-one communication tool that Twitter was meant to be. There’s no advertising cost to engage with a person as another person!

LinkedIn may not be a great place to generate a completely new lead, but it is the best place to communicate with potential business partners with whom you’re already engaged.

Recommendation #3: Use LinkedIn for franchise development via your personal profile, not your company LinkedIn page. People buy from people. The goldmine of LinkedIn for any brand is in its use by company representatives as individuals. Sure, your company page needs to be updated and appealing. But the heavy lifting needs to be done from you as a business leader.

Recommendation #4: Use these tactics every day to get to the next level with your franchise prospects on LinkedIn:

*Share relevant business articles and blog posts that would be of interest to your candidates.

*Reach out to them via LinkedIn messages and InMails. Both have a significantly higher response rate than emails.

And remember the most important thing when promoting a business to prospective buyers on social media: even when you’re not engaging with them, they’re watching you!

Custom Audience Targeting allows you to upload a database of email addresses and then serve up Facebook ads to only those people. While Facebook won’t open the floodgate of targeting your prospects by name, it will match the person’s email address from your list to a Facebook user profile.

While consumer marketers have been taking advantage of this capability for nearly as long as there have been ads on Facebook, many franchise marketers have not yet discovered it. Most franchisors are focused on creating awareness with larger audiences based on demographics. They’re missing an easy touchpoint with their leads and candidates who could be engaged in a place where they are easy to reach.

And REACHING them is what it’s really all about! This isn’t about finding people who you never knew existed. It’s about not discovering a whole new species of humanoid who wants to be a franchisee. This is about getting in front of your candidates where they already live.

The average American adult spends nearly 7 hours per week on Facebook. Insert yourself and your brand into those hours among the political memes, game highlights, family photos, and cat videos.

Multiple Stages, Multiple Messages

If your email database is updated and well-managed, you can serve messages appropriate for every stage in your sales funnel. One message may be great for an old lead that faded away a while back. A very different message may fit a candidate further along in the pipeline. The more narrowed-down your target audience, the more relevant your message, and the more efficient your ad spend!

A Unique Marketing Opportunity for Franchising

Franchise Development is different than other Business-To-Business sales types in that prospects and leads use their home or personal email addresses on whatever submission forms brought those email addresses into your database. This is perfect for Facebook Customer Audience Targeting, as most people sign up with Facebook using their personal email address. Selling other business services can be challenging using this method, as most B2B sales pros have prospects’ work email addresses, not the ones that match Facebook’s database. In this way, as in many other ways, Fran Dev is much more like B2C selling in the digital world.

I’m looking forward to moderating an all-star panel discussing Social Media in Franchise Sales. At the 2016 Franchise Leadership and Development Conference in Atlanta on September 29, we will dive deep into best social media practices for franchise marketing and sales executives. From Franchise Update:

What is Social Media’s role in franchisee recruitment to generate leads, provide validation, get people talking about your brand? This session will help you understand the options and opportunities Social Media offers to help grow your brand.